Abjection: A definition for discard studies

“Populations that deal with waste are tagged as dirty through their material association with trash (scavengers, trash collectors, recycler) (Gidwani and Reddy 2011).”

In this article, Mohammed Rafi Arefin highlights beautifully the socio-emotional challenges of bringing individuals into the open appreciation and practice of reuse. This risk of personal abjection (or emotional need to feel clean and through that, to belong) is why so many are loathe to embrace the traditional secondhand stores (the stores feel inherently dirty, and/or they feel dirty or second class for going there)… this is a real barrier to driving more sustainable behaviors at a grander scale.

As such, our best opportunity to collectively reduce what is perceived as ‘other’ or ‘unclean’ (both with respect to waste – and with respect to those who work with those things which are not brand new) is by helping our communities bridge the perception gap between what is trash (the abject) and what is (or could be) art (the sublime).

As S. P. Dennison puts it, “ability to see beauty is the beginning of our moral sensibility: what we believe is beautiful we will not wantonly destroy.”

I do believe that many of us see – and/or can be taught to see – that beauty… but while we may see it and want to embrace it, Mr. Arefin’s work points out that the stigma of abjection has made it a brave act to openly admit to an affinity for finding value in the waste of others…

First point: those in the business of sourcing and reselling all things vintage, reuse, and otherwise un-new (and potentially dirty) have a unique opportunity to drive societal change – and increase the perceived value of secondhand stuff – through transparency and education. Where do we get our stuff? What work do we do to make it palatable for a dirt-averse genpop? What is the value of prettying things up so genpop feels good about their sustainable consumption?

Second point: if we want to collectively draw a society of dirt-averse people into sustainable consumption behaviors, we currently have the wrong people sorting through our waste, charitable product donations, and recycling facility conveyor belts. We need artists and aesthetes, creatives and crafters. We need people who see possibility…who see beauty — and we need these people at all levels of the organizations involved in waste management.

Third point: If we want to be ready to manage demand as the formerly-dirt-averse join the early adopters in our open appreciation of the sublime (and potentially sublime), then we’re going to need a more effective supply chain for used products and materials, built around beauty.

Fourth point: for those wondering about how this relates even wildly to social media:
One of the reasons Junket has been so successful in its social media efforts is through transparency about where our products come from (the trash). We’ve embraced our otherness, our weirdness, openly and socially (despite the risk of abjection) and in so doing, we’ve made it okay for others to become part of a like-minded community of people who also proudly embrace what we embrace. … and this opportunity to alter one’s sense of self from fear-of-shame-or-rejection to security-in-belonging is a pretty powerful transition.

And yes, surely this example is specific to Junket’s mission. But here’s where it could also apply to you: does your chosen work solve a social problem? Could it? Therein lies your opportunity to engage the right people in something they care passionately about – i.e. passionately enough to pay attention to your message, and to want to be a part of what you’re creating – and with luck, passionately enough to involve others, as well.

Discard Studies

Art by Loren Crabbe, from the series “Purging Abjection.”

By Mohammed Rafi Arefin
This post is part of the Discard Studies Compendium

Abjection describes a social and psychological process by which things like garbage, sewage, corpses and rotting food elicit powerful emotional responses like horror and disgust. While abjection theory has been used in various ways across the social sciences and humanities, it emerges from the psychoanalytic work of Julia Kristeva.

Drawing on a seminal text in Discard Studies, Mary Douglas’Purity and Danger (1966), Julia Kristeva’s foundational book The Powers of Horror(1982) develops the theory of abjection through literary, psychoanalytic, and anthropological works. Furthering the insight of Douglas that dirt is not an essential characteristic of objects but is produced through its ambiguity and its subsequent inability to be assimilated into existing socio-cultural categories and systems, Kristeva explains how the constant process of keeping the…

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More questions than answers (oh – and plastic free farmers market?)

When we become dogmatic about something, be it religious belief or political mindset or which kind of sweetener we should be using for the sake of our health and wellness, how do we truly know that what we’ve become staunchly supportive of (or opposed to) is a wise choice? We’re freaking out: but are we freaking out about the right things? Could we, maybe?

Consider our collective ‘BPA-free water bottles’ fervor back in 2010-2011: alerted to the dangers of BPA in our plastic water bottles, we all went out and replaced our Nalgene water bottles with BPA-free Nalgene water bottles (or metal ones, or glass or….whatever. You get the point. We took action quickly. We spent money. We felt relieved and somehow safer for having done this). But is investing in new water bottles an appropriate response to the true threat of BPA? What about handling sales receipts? And is BPA the only cancer-causing chemical byproduct of plastic that we need be concerned about?  And what about the fact that virtually all of our food is somehow packaged in plastic (the chemical compounds of which manufacturers aren’t required to disclose)? Shouldn’t we be responding/reacting to that? Why aren’t we? The threat seems higher, the impact more severe…

I wonder if I’m out of touch with the current general social consensus about this – but then I wander through the grocery, with most products still wrapped in plastic. And purchased in plastic, because in most cases, that’s our option (or perhaps the only affordable option)… clearly, we’re still buying this stuff in its styro-plasti-polymer encasements…  how is there no panic, no demands for change?

I wonder if it feels like too much. Too much risk, too much information, too much attention required to figure this stuff out… No one’s made it easy (at least not as easy as manufacturing and marketing and buying BPA-free water bottles).

I know very little about food packaging and safety. I know I need to eat, and sometimes (ok, more than sometimes), immediate hunger comes before long term health and wellness considerations. But wouldn’t it be helpful if we could get organized enough to drive change in our food systems? How can we become more attentive, thoughtful consumers when it comes to our own health and safety?

Would it make sense to have companies be accountable for listing the compounds and byproducts they’re using and producing? A sort of social impact bottom line? If it’s already happening, perhaps the data needs organizing for easier digestion?

And in Minneapolis (market managers, take note): there’s huge opportunity to drive change from the ground up with the launch of — or transition to — a plastic-free farmer’s market.  If you’re already working on this, please ping me.

Synthesizing

The jumble in my head is starting to line up:

For-profit benefits + non-profit incentives + tax benefits (er, unchecked tax fraud) here = continued/enabled environmental abuses + labor abuses elsewhere.

When consumers happily rejoice as they purge their unwanted stuff in the spirit of ‘helping’ — and when the secondary goods market is directly encouraging the ‘helping’ while benefiting directly to the tune of eight figure profits (“Good job, Bob – you donated a shirt and helped a non-profit”) when the reality is that unprecedented waste – originally generated under sweatshop conditions — is subsequently making its way into the streets and trash bins of developing countries, and when rampant tax fraud is being enabled by the same secondary goods market players in the name of “I don’t see anybody complaining – everyone’s making money, so who’s getting hurt?,” perhaps we’re overdue for a level-set.

More to come.

Thankful

Today, I completed my taxes for FY14 — nearly two months ahead of schedule, and with very little anxiety or labor invested. I can’t even believe that I’m not poring over mileage reports, receipts, and spreadsheets (even more, I can’t believe I’m not avoiding/dreading the same). The chaos of my bootstrapped world continues to make way for order, rhythm, and healthy routine.

Other thoughts on today’s happenings (search & rescue, reaching out, cleaning up) will wait for now… tonight, I’m thankful for steady progress, for the imminence of restful sleep, and for the promise that tomorrow holds.

From ‘We’ to ‘Me.’

I’ve spent a lot of time talking in the ‘first person, plural’ POV during the last four years. At first, ‘we’ was just Junket and me (and a 2-year-old rugrat whose own voice was mostly unintelligible). As I posted, tweeted and blogged into the ether as the voice of Junket, being ‘we’ made it easier to share ideas without feeling overexposed as I navigated the ambiguity of first time solopreneurship.

Over time, that ‘we’ grew to include others: volunteers and supporters, people who believed in what we were (I was) doing, who valued what we (I) valued, and who, like me, wanted to live in a more creative, more thoughtful, more soul-enriching world. Junket’s online community grew – as did its real life community… and as the business started to scale, it also grew to include new team members…. Today, with my time increasingly in demand to provide leadership – both for the company and within the greater community – Junket’s voice (and the development of content) have been delegated to a talented young pro ready to amplify its reach (thank you, Candice!). And with this successful transition, it’s become time for me to start talking in the first person again (do I even know how?)

While I’ve always been a community organizer of sorts — party host, gatherer-of-friends, eager volunteer and champion of bold ideas and stronger neighborhoods — developing Junket gave me a platform to engage my talent for positively influencing others. While I initially sought connection, community, and belonging by reaching out as Junket, it didn’t take long to realize that by using Junket’s online platform to do this, I was finding real people with similar desires. Over 25,000 real people, in fact. And as they continued to join Junket’s growing tribe, others started to take notice — and increasingly, to ask me for help in building their own social networks.

Maybe you’re needing help, too?

It’s true: I can help you understand what it takes to develop a stronger social media following. When you meet with me, I’ll share tips and tricks. I’ll share tactical guidance and time-saving best practices. But first, I’ll help you understand the basics of creating content that matters to your audience (both current and future) – because if what you communicate doesn’t engage, inform, and compel, then what’s the use?

The great news? This isn’t exactly rocket science — because if you can figure out how to make the lives of your people easier (without trying to sell them something), you’ll be off and running in no time.

And me? I’ll still be talking in the first person.